Determine whether today is a day to move or not move from just one perspective

Even though you’re using the same method, there are days when the results strangely differ

When trading, have you ever experienced something like this?

“I entered today with the same rules as yesterday, but today it just didn’t move at all.”

In many cases, this is often attributed to entry technique or timing. But in reality, the decisive factor can be a more fundamental one: whether that day was a “day when price movement tends to expand” or not.

This time, I’d like to write a little about the way I first check the “milestones of price movement” every day when I open the chart.

The market has a “character” for each time of day

FX moves 24 hours a day, but the nature of price movement varies quite a bit by the time of day.

During certain times, the price range is small and price movement tends to stay within a narrow range. On the other hand, at other times movement becomes suddenly active, and it’s easier for prices to break out of the prior range.

This structure of “staying quiet within a range” and “breaking out from there” is a point many traders instinctively pay attention to.

Days when the range is narrow and orderly, and days when it is wide and volatile

What’s interesting here is that the way the range “sees to stay together” itself varies from day to day.

On days when the range is relatively narrow and neatly contained, there is a tendency for momentum to build in the following price movement. Conversely, when the range itself is wide and volatile from the start, the subsequent development tends to be harder to predict.

Of course, this is not an absolute law; it’s just a tendency. Still, by being aware of how the range “stays together,” you gain one more piece of information for judging whether today is a day to trade with your usual rules or a day to wait and observe a bit more.

The small checks I perform every day

Personally, when I open a chart I first check how wide the range of the major trading session is and how it’s consolidating.

I keep in my head (or draw manually) the upper and lower bounds of this range, and then watch which direction the subsequent price movement breaks out from that range. That is the basic flow.

However, doing this manually every day is a bit of a hassle. Depending on the time you view the chart, you can miss it, and it’s even more so when checking multiple currency pairs.

What happened when I automated it

So I created an indicator that automates the detection of this range and the drawing of lines. It is called “SessionBreakLine.

On days when the conditions align, it automatically draws horizontal lines at the expected upper and lower bounds of the range, and it can also issue alerts when the price breaks through those levels. This eliminates the daily manual line drawing, enabling you to grasp price movement milestones via alerts.

Details on features and supported environments are described on the product page.

In conclusion

Staying glued to the market all day isn’t very realistic. Therefore, just by keeping an eye on the milestone of whether today is a movement-friendly day or not, you can reduce the burden of daily trading by a helpful margin.

※This article is intended to share general ideas about the market and does not endorse any specific trades. It does not guarantee market movements or profits, so please make investment decisions at your own risk.